Archive for August 2009

 
 

September 11th

I am very close now to performing a solo for my masters degree. I’ve set the duration at 45 minutes. Why that long? Firstly I’ve never performed a solo that long and I’m seeing it a bit of a rite of passage. The more experienced improvisers like Julyen and Katie D have performed solo’s of that length +. Also it will be taking the format of a performance lecture, and I will be distributing the material in a particular way. Simon might call that a ‘framing’, others might think of it as a ‘score’. Within that duration certain conditions and events will have been implicitly pre-fabricated, certain decisions already made. So its not an open format improvised performance by any means.

The intention is perform a danced solo whilst weaving spoken commentary and critique into the fabric of the thing. My intention for the speaking part is to draw on the style and positionality of the stand up comedian (‘positionality’ referring to standing up I guess, sorry thats ‘Dad’ style humour.)

The work is being performed on September the 11th and 12th.

Triangulation, Originality, Recognition

Been thinking about the triangulation that occurs between the improvising performer and the audience. The way I’m thinking about is in the context of a solo. So I’m the one dancing and hypothetical you is the one watching (btw thanks for coming to watch hypothetical-you).  I don’t know what the audience is experiencing and they don’t know what I’m experiencing. But that’s not a fragmentation or a binary to me, that’s part of the whole event. Even if I’m actively performing and the audience is actively watching albeit in situ the event is still something that WE do together.

So I’m dancing away there and making up the stuff that I make up, its full of emergent ideas and a pretty unusual movement vocabulary. And hypothetical-you is sitting there trying to relate to it. There may be some mirror neuron stuff going in hypothetical-you’s nervous system but actually chances are if the movement that I’m doing is

1. unrecognizable / highly unusual..and

2. the dynamic is relatively low energy / internal as it can sometimes be

the result tends to be that hypothetical-you can have an experience that’s less than satisfying, maybe even baffling. If however I up the stakes a little by picking up the movement dynamic, going ballistic, doing riskier stuff the mirror neuron effect can kick in a little more strongly. Even if what I’m doing has a low recognition factor . I reckon that’s partly why people like the dynamic stuff in dancey dance land.

But with the improv thing often being performed by some very intelligent people (like Simon for example) who can create material that is pretty high end creative (maybe even ‘original’ or ‘innovative’) and tends to skew most of the perceived cliche’s, there’s a pretty good chance that your average hypothetical-you isn’t going to be able to traverse its diameters.

I’m not driving at any particular point here that I’ve haven’t driven around before. But this was sparked up again by a piece of writing about originality in theatre and how contentious that can be when there is little precedent for its existence. That combined with the culture playing a part in writing it into existence (there’s me triangulation again)  but simultaneously not recognizing it.

experimentation

Apologies for the very long quote. It’s from page 92 of Bruce Baugh’s chapter Experimentation in The Deleuze Dictionary (edited by Adrian Parr):

Life-experimentation, through a set of practices effecting new combinations and relations and forming powers, is biological and political, and often involves experientially discovering how to dissolve the boundaries of the ego or self in order to open flows of intensity, ‘continuums and conjunctions of affect’ (D&G 1987: 162). Active experimentation involves trying new procedures, combinations and their unpredictable effects to produce a ‘Body without Organs’ (BwO) or a ‘field of immanence’ or ‘plane of consistency’, in which desires, intensities, movements and flows pass unimpeded by the repressive mechanisms of judgement and interpretation. Experimental constructions proceed bit by bit and flow by flow, using different techniques and materials in different circumstances and under different conditions, without any pre-established or set rules or procedures, as similar effects (for example, intoxication) can be produced by different means (ingesting peyote, or ‘getting soused on water’). ‘One never knows in advance (D 1987: 47), and if one did, it would not be an experiment. Experimentation by its nature breaks free of the past and dismantles old assemblages (social formations, the Self), and constructs lines of flight or movements of deterritoralisation by effecting new and previously untried combinations of persons, forces and things, ‘the new, remarkable, and interesting’ (D&G 1994: 111). In literature, politics, and in life, experiments are practices that discover and dismantle assemblages, and which look for the lines of flight of individuals or groups, the dangers on these lines, and new combinations that will thwart predictions and allow the new to emerge.

The included references are:

D&G 94: Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1994), What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press
D&G 87: Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
D 1987: Deleuze, Gilles(1987), Dialogues with Calre Parnet, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Athlone Press.

How is this me?

I’m in the studio with Colin Poole at the moment.

We’ve never worked together, and as we’ve been finding out about each other, watching each other dance, dancing together, talking, figuring out what we are doing (open research? making a work?), I’ve been struck (again) by how and what it is that I recognise in an other—and in myself—dancing. I am thinking here of more than simply ‘habits’ (which tend to be considered pejoratively), but a more focused awareness and understanding of the make-up of our dancing. How is it that I know Colin’s dancing from just two weeks in the studio?

Posture, timing, gaze, repetition, the tendency towards particular areas of initiation, flourishes in the head and neck? (this list is incomplete!).

Many years ago I used to think about escaping my old dancing me in order to replace it with a newer (more sophisticated) dancing me. The urge to touch newness at the expense of the habitual was very strong. To step outside of myself, and see how it is that others might see me dancing.

The desire for alternatives is invaluable I think as a tool for listening or engagement whilst improvising, but I feel quieter in this quest. I get glimpses of the new touching the known, and in this quietness perhaps there is room (occasionally) for the ecstatic.

Apologies for the solipsism.

Contemplation / Feeling Duration

I’m in preparation for my masters performance coming up in about 5 weeks. It will be two 45 minute improvised solos over two consecutive nights. This is the 1st ‘major’ work I’ve done for a long time now. The longest improvised solos I have ever done been 20 minutes.

A new component I’ve added to my practice is contemplation. I’m approaching contemplation via Ralston.  His take on it is this: “..being open to a direct experiential breakthrough in consciousness with the intent that it occur.” It involves placing ones attention on a question and staying present to the  question until insight is experienced. This can be done sitting or whilst doing an activity.

I’m doing it sitting (I’m working hard enough in the studio already). The duration I’ve given myself for each session is … 45 minutes! I’ve been interested in developing my stamina in the area of concentration for a long time now and contemplation is one way of doing it. This new aspect of the practice has a sub agenda stitched into it;  working on developing a feeling sense in my body for 45 minute durations – useful for the upcoming performance event.